BONN, Germany -- For the last 10 days, climate negotiators, diplomats and environmental activists have proved to be a hard-working lot, but their dedication does not seem to have been enough to produce tangible results for the climate discussions here, which are ending today.

These discussions are part of a series of meetings under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that are aimed at producing a new global emission reduction treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol at a U.N.-sponsored meeting in Copenhagen in December.

There has been a flurry of workshops, presentations, briefings and plenary sessions at the Hotel Maritim, which is hosting the conference. Attendees are everywhere, either hunched over laptops or swarming, alone or in groups, notebook to hand, cell phone to ear. Their days are not over until late in the evening, and the next day's early start is easy to detect in heavy eyelids and nibbled breakfasts while the work goes on.

Activists representing environmental defense organizations, such as the World Wildlife Fund, have been delivering what appear to be nonstop comments to both national delegations and groups of countries. To one group they are trying to dispell misunderstandings. To another they are prompting delegates to intermingle and, if possible, find common ground.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), some positive momentum has gotten under way on deforestation -- or, more precisely, on "reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries," also known as the REDD scheme.

EDF said that during the Bonn talks, several nations -- including Colombia, India and Norway -- called for a special session to be held to discuss how to compensate developing countries for protecting forest as part of a new global climate deal. A majority of nations stated that various approaches ought to be considered for compensating forest nations; many said that financing through carbon markets would be needed.

Among other changes observed by Bonn attendees is the fact that some members of the Group of 77 (G-77) developing countries -- like Mexico, Argentina and South Africa -- are shouldering more responsibilities.

China slightly softens its stance

Experienced hands are also saying that China has softened its discourse somewhat: In Bonn, during a debate on finance, instead of sharply stating, as it has done in the past, that industrialized countries must pay for their impact on world climate, China quietly observed that the use of the carbon market is just one of several options available for funding actions in developing countries, and should not take the place of other responsibilities.

Finally, the Bonn meetings included a workshop on agriculture, apparently a first. "It's the first time this issue has ever been brought up in formal negotiations," noted Antonio Hill of Oxfam. "Of course, this happened in a workshop, but nevertheless, there's more talk on how to include agriculture within the context of both adaptation and mitigation."

But for the major topics of negotiation, movement has been hard to detect. Yesterday, on the eve of the conference's final session, targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by industrialized countries and the matter of financing mitigation and adaptation measures in developing countries appeared to be stymied.

According to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the 175 nations gathered in Bonn have centered on what industrialized countries should do to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases while focusing on quantifying their emission reductions. Positions seem to be stalled on the matter of CO2 emission reductions targets, both medium- and long-term.

At a meeting here Monday, developing and industrialized countries at times expressed highly diverging views on the question of setting up a numerical global goal for long-term emission reductions. A few days before, an alliance of small island states, backed by a dozen African and Latin American nations, had urged developed nations to collectively reduce emissions by at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020.

By contrast, the European Union is pledging to cut emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 (30 percent if other industrialized nations follow suit), while the Obama administration is aiming to bring U.S. emissions back down to 1990 levels by 2020.

'Hard work' ahead

"Despite the change in tone, countries are as far apart as ever on a range of key issues," said Hill from Oxfam on Monday. In an interview with Reuters, de Boer himself acknowledged that it will be "hard work" getting rich nations to agree cuts in greenhouse gases that are deep enough to satisfy the demands of developing countries at climate talks.

The United Nations' climate chief also said, according to the Indo-Asian News Service, that India and China, while "participating very constructively" in the negotiations, are "pointing out that their overriding concern is economic growth and poverty eradication and that any climate change agreement that's adopted in Copenhagen must be in line with that dual role."

According to Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, the Bonn delegates also discussed whether or not the new climate agreement should resemble the Kyoto Protocol and include a cap-and-trade framework modeled on the European Union's trading system.

Petsonk added that although in Bonn feeling was running strongly in favor of choosing this path, one question remained: Which countries should have these caps on emissions -- industrialized countries only, or developing countries, as well? "It's one of the hottest topics here," she said.

Lively discussion also centered on the financial support industrialized nations must give to less-developed countries and small island states to help them adapt to a warmer planet, as well as the question of transferring technologies to these countries to help them reduce their emissions.

Countries also discussed how to increase public funding -- without repackaging official development assistance -- and debated the role of market-based mechanisms in funding mitigation and adaptation measures, as well as how that approach could be expanded.

Developing countries stated that they want to see a majority of funding come from public funds, while developed nations believe such funding should come mainly from the private sector.

"The scale of funding needed has not been committed to here, and we don't have any clear consensus yet on how this financing will be mobilized," said Tasneem Essop, international climate policy advocate for WWF South Africa. "There has been no convergence, either, on the proportion of those funds coming from public or private sources."

Yet Essop, speaking at a press briefing, acknowledged that all was not lost on the funding front. "Lots of proposals have been put on the table -- by the G-77 and China, by Mexico, by Norway -- and what is exciting in this round is that more parties have expressed their willingness to engage with the different proposals."

Proposal for a new global fund

Put out last year, the Mexican and Norwegian proposals respectively put forward the creation of a new global fund to which every country would contribute and the auctioning of a percentage of international allowances.

"It seems there's some convergence -- but not a consensus -- that this kind of approaches is what we will see in the Copenhagen agreement," said Jos Cozijnsen, a consulting attorney working for EDF.

All parties interviewed agreed that the general atmosphere of the talks improved greatly following the arrival of the Obama administration's delegation in Bonn.

Activists were quick to add, however, that the honeymoon will be over if U.S. results do not follow.

Said WWF's Essop: "Of course we are very appreciative of the U.S. for opening up the dynamic and for its willingness to listen, and we understand this is a relatively new administration, but we have to see far more commitments from all the [industrialized] countries in June, and that includes the USA."